How to optimise your implant website for Google

Getting to the top of a Google search in order to ​help more local people eat, smile and chew with confidence.

The more people that visit your website the greater chance that there is of converting them into patients, so let’s take a look at how to do that.

Google probably uses over 200 factors (1) in order to calculate where to place each website in its search results, much like a mixing deck in a recording studio, Google continuously slides each factor’s importance but does this without telling anyone.

The real key is to focus on the top factors which will rank a website and ensure that these are working correctly. This article is aimed at helping poorly performing websites.

Image courtesy of Serge Bertasius at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

On-site optimisation

These are changes you can make directly on your website to ensure it is found. The best way to envisage this is to think about the process you go through when you look for a book in the library, imagine your website as books with Google searching through millions of them to find the right one.

If you are looking for a book on teeth whitening, for example, then the first thing you would do is scour through the titles to find one that suited your needs. Once you have done this you would probably open the book and scan through the index of the chapter headings, you may read a few paragraphs, look for lists and highlighted text to see if it was relevant to your specific concerns, all of these searches you perform will be comparing keywords you read with the specific reason you want that book. You may even check out a few of the images to see if the book was even more relevant.

Google does exactly the same thing, here is that library book search example phrased in Google search terms.

Book title = meta <title> “title with relevant keywords should be here”

Book description = meta <description> “description with relevant keywords should be here”

Chapter headings = <H1>, <H2>, <H3> all using relevant keywords as the titles

Lists = <li> bullet lists and numbered lists, all using relevant keywords in those lists

(Factors highlighted grey will have no visible difference to the content of your website, they will only be in the code), but rest assured Google will see them.

Offsite optimisation

Thinking about that same example of finding a book in the library, you may find a book which you believe completely fulfils your requirements of finding out more about teeth whitening, but what do other people think of this book? If there were 100 similar books on teeth whitening, and only one of them was highly recommended by other people then you may decide to choose this book.

Google does the same thing, the more people that are talking about you around the Internet the more trust your website gains from Google.

Think of each time that someone mentions your website as a vote, the more votes your website has the more chance it has of being found.

As well as the number of votes or people talking about your website, Google also looks at the credibility of those votes. Think about celebrity endorsements for products, if you can get a high profile celebrity endorsement for the teeth whitening book then some people may be more inclined to consider that endorsement more valuable than other endorsements.

Once again, Google mirrors this thought process. Someone on a small-town website may mention yours in a blog post (perhaps you write a particularly good article about dental implants which other websites want to reference) but if that same article is talked about on the BBC News website (which probably has millions of links to it) then Google will see the link from the BBC as more valuable than a link from some small-town website in the back of beyond.(2)

Summary

In order to get your website to rank highly you must be very specific and tell Google what your website is about, much like finding a book in the library. You must then demonstrate that this book in the library is worthwhile by attracting high quality links from other websites.

The best way to start attracting high quality links is to create excellent quality content that people actually want to link to and talk about, a blog is an excellent way to do this, handout useful free relevant dental health and teeth replacement advice, other websites will find you, link to you and your website will begin to rise through the search results.